Even techs get stuck. Yesterday reminded me that sometimes, the person everyone calls for help also hits a wall. I was working remotely via VPN, ready to assist a teammate, when my own RDP session froze on “Please wait.” I couldn’t move, couldn’t connect, and couldn’t help. It was like watching a surgeon get locked out of the operating room.
What Happened:
From home, I connected to VPN and tried to RDP into my office desktop, but I got stuck at the “Please wait” screen. VPN was up, but Remote Desktop was frozen. I launched a Command Prompt window and ran:
query session /server:xx.xx.xx.xx
Note: IP address redacted for security.
Here’s a redacted example of the output:
SESSIONNAME USERNAME ID STATE TYPE
services 0 Disc
rdp-tcp#16 johdoe 1 Active rdpwd
console johdoe 2 Conn wdcon
From the list above, I saw that ID 1 was in a Disc (Disconnected) state — an orphaned session that blocked me from connecting normally.
To fix it, I ran:
reset session 1 /server:xx.xx.xx.xx
After a few seconds, I reconnected via RDP successfully — and the session loaded instantly.
Conclusion:
This was a humbling moment. VPN doesn’t mean much if a stuck session locks you out. Knowing how to query session and reset session remotely is like having a digital master key. When the helper needs help, this trick puts you back in the game.
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